ByzCath:
Right, obvisouly he is a very powerful human who uses magic, which is what makes him powerful.
It is not that plain to see that he is not human. I know of many people who read these books and do not pick up the Catholic things in them.
They are not that plain to see.
Some further understanding as to the nature of wizards in the the realm of Tolkien’s Middle Earth can be found in The Silmarilion, in which it is stated that wizards , though resembling humans, are not in fact, human, as mentioned in the Apendices at the back of ,
The Return Of the King. Gandalf, in fact, is given an approximate lifetime before his death in Moria of 7,000 - plus years, always resembling a man in his dotage.
As for Harry Potter, well, I see no “real” magic in the books. Waving sticks at people is perhaps rude, and jabbering at people in latin, in my own experience, only seems to annoy them. As for the fantastic magical beasts found in both books, they are both taken from ancient poetic metaphors, commonly understood to be constellations in reference, or concepts of changes due to Precession in the night-sky(eg; dragons for Draco, Centaurs for Chieron, Griffons for Ophiucus, Leo, Sagittarius, Ophion, and etcetera), if they are not pure fictions of the imagination of the writer, or derived from the imaginative flights of other writers in history that influenced the author.
I do not see that it is obvious that Gandalf is a very powerful human that uses magic. To the contrary, I see that Gandalf is a person that is rarely seen to use magic, and is more famous as a pyrotechnics expert, a diplomat, a litigator, a tutor, and a trouble-maker.He is known among the races, especially the elves, as a man of great wisdom and perceptiveness, but the books of LOTR do not show a lot of Occult powers displayed by Gandalf per se,except The Fellowship of the Ring; and that book portrays Gandalf actually doing some seriously big magic, using every power he possesses, to fight and defeat a demon called a Balrog, at the cost of his life, to save his friends, and their mission. But then again, to return to Harry Potter, I also fail to see the evil in being a teenager with such strong moral fibre. Here I must admit that my memories of adolescence are unpleasant, awkward, and painful. I wish that under my own tests in adverse conditions, I had done so well as Harry, but then, I was, like so many other “Muggles”, not embued with the legacy of a pile of gold nor the abilty to perform magic by waving a stick and incanting latin phrases… might of come in handy with my algebra teacher, though, alas…
Also, I should add that I have no idea who O’Brian is, and why one should take his side; also I agree with ByzCath that many people who have previously posted views on this string do not seem to have a clear understanding about what the word occult is, nor what it means.
